Chancy (1968) Read Online Free Page B

the idea they all look alike, but a good cattleman will soon know every steer in a herd. My brands tallied to seven hundred and thirty-three.
    At the crossing of the Canadian we met our first Indians, a small party of Shawnees, living in buffalo-hide lodges. Three bucks mounted ponies and rode over to meet us. Turning the dun, I went out to them.
    Now, a long time back the Cumberland was Shawnee country, and a few of them had drifted back there to live, so I knew some of their lingo, and of course I'd picked up sign language from the Cherokees.
    It turned out I didn't need either one. The youngest of them spoke American. We did some palavering, but I had my eyes on a buckskin pony I saw tethered near their lodges. Even at that distance, I could see it wore a brand, which meant that it might be a good cow horse. Anyway, I could see, plain enough, that it was a mighty fine horse.
    When I greeted them in Shawnee they wanted to know where I was from, and when I told them, they got all excited. They knew the Cumberland, and we talked about it some, about the country and the hunting.
    They had been a long time without meat, they said, and they asked could I let them have a beef. I told them that I'd swap what did they have?
    Well, they trotted out moccasins, buckskin jackets, and an old worn-out Kentucky rifle, and a few other things. Finally I told them I needed a horse. How about that old, broken-down buckskin?
    At that, they blew up. The buckskin was not old, he was young. He was a fine horse, their best horse, and he was not to be traded.
    So I changed the subject. They wanted beef, and I needed an extra horse. I rarely smoked, but I carried tobacco, and now I dug out my pouch, passed it around, then rolled a smoke for myself. Meanwhile, I talked about the Shawnees, and about how my folks had come into Shawnee country among the first white men--how they had traded, traveled, and hunted with the Shawnees. I made out as if I'd forgotten all about any trading.
    Now, contrary to what folks have been led to believe, Indians are great talkers, and the old stories told by their people are fresh in their minds. We talked about how the Shawnees, once friends of the Cherokees, had been driven from the Cumberland by them, but that now they were friends once more.
    The cattle drifted by, moving slowly, as always, pausing here and there to graze a bit, then moving on. Finally I swung my horse as if to join the herd, and again the Indians asked for beef.
    "I'll swap a fat steer for that buckskin," I said.
    They refused, and I started off, but one of them called after me: "Three steers!"
    The horse was worth three steers to me because I was akeady overworking the dun, and once we got out on open grass we'd need three or four horses each to handle those cattle. Even that number wouldn't be enough to do the job really right. Moving through the brush as we had been doing, there wasn't much chance so far for the stock to stray.
    We bargained for a spell, and the upshot of it was that I got the buckskin for two steers. When I cut them from the herd, Gates looked mighty sour. "If you don't make good on that note," he said, "that buckskin belongs to us."
    "What you'd better think about," I told him, "is how much work he'll save you. I'm already doing as much as any two of your crowd. The better horses I have to ride, the less your men will have to do."
    That made sense, and it shut him up, and the others, too.
    In all that while I'd exchanged no words with the redhead. Oh, she was a pretty one, all right, with a feisty way about her, avoiding me, but never staying long out of sight. She knew what she had, and she wanted to be sure I knew it, too.
    The thing was, she was avoiding me without any need. I'd trouble enough, without giving them excuse to shoot me. If they did shoot me, I was determined that I wasn't going to make it easy for them.
    The next morning we took the herd across the Canadian. It was low water, and we had to swim only a short